Mat and all,
James 1:13-15
13 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot
be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted
when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then,
after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is
full-grown, gives birth to death.
NIV
Tempted is defined as...
NT:3985
peirazo (pi-rad'-zo); from NT:3984; to test (objectively), i.e. endeavor,
scrutinize, entice, discipline:
KJV - assay, examine, go about, prove, tempt (-er), try.
What do you think of this thought? God gave us all on earth a free will to
choose how we might conduct ourselves, many misconstrue, in my opinion and
understanding, that just because
god is all knowing, all powerful and all everything, that he is
automatically responsible for allowing a test, or stopping evil in life.
The old attage, "the devil made me do it" is hogwash, I made me do it as
the scripture so said. The enemy can present you with evil, but he can't
make you do it, God does neither present it, test us with it, or make it
upon us, and just because he is all powerful doesn't mean he is allowing
it to prove us out. We enter into it on our own and he let's us because he
has given us a awesome gift of free will to choose him or choose our
selves, or choose any other god we might decide to put before him.The
enemy understands this and that is why he tries so hard to present us with
evil that we might follow him. If we had no choice, we'd be spiritual
robots, pre-programmed to follow God, and what honor or glory would that
be? Even angelic beings created to serve and worship God made decision to
follow satan. I just do not believe that God tests us with evil. Believing
so would that not contradict God's word?
Brad
on 09:11 AM 4/15/2005, Matt said:
Just jotting down the thoughts which entered my mind after reading this.
Someday, our precious little girl will be a teenager. OY!
I recently heard a teaching which said that god allows evil into our lives
in way of a test or a growing us toward his purpose for our lives.
We don't know that purpose but we are to trust god with the results.
I have also heard a teaching which says that if you pray to god and give
him
a problem, that you should stop praying about it over and over and trust
that when you gave it to god, he took ownership of it and he is dealing
with
it in his own way, knowing that which he knows and which we do not know.
If you keep praying about that which you have claimed to have given to
god,
then you aren't trusting that he is taking care of it.
If you feel the need to pray again over the same thing, then, just pray
that
you can find Pease and trust god and not let the devil get to you through
worry.
Soon, this kid will be responsible for himself and you will have to return
your full attention to your marriage and your own life, has the kid's
problems so consumed your lives that you will have a lot of reacquainting
to
do?
What loose ends are there to tie up in that respect?
All of this comes strait out of my head without any thought put into how
to
word it, so excuse the errors and choppy thought patterns.
I struggle with this idea, that we are responsible to our children for a
time but that it is our job to teach them so that they will be able to
deal
once they grow up.
However, I did not start "growing up", really until the last few years and
I
am in my mid 30's.
That scripture about training your children up right and when they mature,
they will not depart from it is constantly in my head.
You have done your job in training, it may not kick in right away though.
I wasn't exactly trained up right, and had to find my own way and still
have
to sift through things and figure out what was wrong in my upbringing and
how I am to deal with situations with my own child who I want to grow up
better than I did.
Matt
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